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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4585 ..

MRS CARNELL: Thank you very much for the question, Mrs Littlewood. Mr Speaker, back in August the Government set itself and the Canberra community what it thought was a pretty ambitious target. Members will remember that earlier in the year a seminar was put together by the Youth Coalition with the business community and members of the Government that, amongst other things, put recommendations to the Government on employment approaches. One of the employment approaches that they put forward, along with the CES, was Youth500.

Using Commonwealth subsidies and $1,000 incentive payments by the ACT Government, we set out in partnership with the CES and the private sector to try to encourage employers to take on people under the age of 21. Our target, as the name of the scheme shows, was 500 jobs by Christmas. It meant that over the 20 weeks between when the scheme was launched and Christmas we had to achieve 25 jobs every week to achieve the 500. It certainly was an ambitious target and an innovative approach, one that brought together the Commonwealth and ACT agencies and the business sector in a partnership to help find new employment opportunities for young people.

I should point out that Youth500 was criticised by only two groups in Canberra. I would have to say that nobody would get a whole lot of money for guessing which two. They were the Labor Party and the Trades and Labour Council. I suppose there was really only one group that criticised it, because I suspect they are one and the same thing. Members would have been interested to note that Youth500 had been very conspicuously left out of the "Working Capital" statement that Mr Berry put forward. Obviously, that side of the house does not support this approach at all.

What has happened to the scheme since it was first launched back in August? I can advise the Assembly today that, perhaps, we were a little too pessimistic, because Youth500 met its target today, a full three weeks before Christmas. Mr Speaker, I know those opposite cannot help themselves, but this is really very exciting. A total of 500 young Canberrans have now been placed in jobs across the city in work ranging from signwriting to retailing, to office administration, in just 17 weeks. That is an average of 30 placements a week. I am advised that many more employers of potential employees are waiting in the wings to take part.

Youth500 has become, without doubt, the most successful employment assistance program ever run in the ACT. It is a great example of what we can achieve as a community if we are enthusiastic, positive and committed to working together to tackle the problem of unemployment. It is positive proof that this Government's creating jobs for Canberra strategy, that we have gone down the path of in the last two budgets, is actually working. At least 300 employers have been involved in the scheme. Those 300 people are deserving of the thanks of everyone in this Assembly, and everyone in Canberra, for that matter, for getting behind Youth500 and being prepared to give our young people a go.

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